


orange, the fruit

by salemslot



Series: kid fics [3]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Autumn, Awkward Sexual Thoughts, Childhood Friends, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Kid Fic, M/M, Mild Angst, child injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 12:57:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15685893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salemslot/pseuds/salemslot
Summary: September 21st, 2007: Ian and Mickey sat in their tree while the sunlight passed through leaves.





	orange, the fruit

**Author's Note:**

> Ian's gonna have some sexual thoughts, reminder that he's a confused growing boy and he's gonna be gross sometimes. His thought process is in no way mature, it's very fumbly, frantic, clueless, and awkward like he is. Nothing will get buck wild while they're kids.
> 
> This is //slightly// shorter because I was struggling on the longer one I was writing, and I just wanted to get something out so there wasn't such a long gap between fics. (: Hope that's cool.
> 
> Ian is twelve and Mickey is thirteen- finally a big bad teenager :P (ps sorry for mistakes i'll fix them)
> 
> ALSO!!!! BEFORE YOU READ!!! My angelic friend Monkey aka [eightmonkeys](http://eightmonkeys.tumblr.com) / [eightmickeys](http://eightmickeys.tumblr.com) drew [art for this fic!!!!](http://eightmonkeys.tumblr.com/post/177189478624/if-i-were-one-of-those-cancer-patients-id-just) It's baby Mickey and Ian under their tree!!! Please give it a look and reblog it because it's the greatest gift I've ever received and you'll cry instantly over their cuteness I guarantee!!!
> 
> EDIT: ALSO!! LOOK AT END NOTES FOR MORE ART

September 21st, 2007

 

Ian looked for Mickey and found him almost instantly.

He was sitting at the base of their tree, back against the trunk, scribbling something on a school folder—or maybe using the folder to hold a paper. Ian didn’t see him do much homework anymore since it lost its whimsical quality after fourth grade, but Mickey was a bit of a math brainiac and had recently gotten placed in honors when school started up two weeks ago.

Ian had never seen him act so aloof and secretive about being apart of anything, and he had never seen him try as hard in school as he did this year, aside from science class when they built molecules out of marshmallows and raw spaghetti. He had a knack for building things, too, and he and his partner (who Ian was admittedly green with envy over, he got stuck with a girl with a Jonas Brothers t-shirt) got the highest marks after an hour of Mickey forming the most badass, complex piece of the whole grade. Mickey didn’t tell anyone about that. Ian only knew because he was there. It was the same with his math placement. No one had a clue how well Mickey was doing and Ian discovered it because he peeped his schedule that fell out of his pants pocket after he shed them off on his bedroom floor and left to brush his teeth.

Ian was a nosy shit. Mickey would have beaten his hopes and dreams out of him if he knew he looked back then. Now it was a little different because he did his work around Ian and the questions were obviously a great deal harder than what was printed on Ian’s sheets. He figured Ian caught on just from the comparison, the shorter length of the equations sans letters following numbers on Ian’s own paper. He’d let him believe that if it saved his ass.

Mickey’s shorts were dirty as though he rolled around in the grass before he settled in his spot. His shoes were thrown to the side, which left him digging his old socks bunched at the ankles into the dirt. He was slouched and relaxed, the folder sitting on his bent legs. His face was screwed in deep concentration, and even from where Ian was approaching he could see the pen flying wildly, no doubt leaving behind messier scrawl than usual. His hand reached up and tugged at his overgrown, shaggy mohawk as a nervous tic, and when he roughly fluffed it, it left small motes rising in the sun that showed between the leaves, casting saturated highlights over his orange and brown striped shirt.

Ian sniffled the loose snot in his nostrils that had been there since Monday after the sore throat portion of his first autumn cold healed. He was so miserable he could barely stay conscious throughout the school week, and afterward, there was no hope for him at all. The second he sat on the couch and toed his sneakers off, he was a goner. His sleep schedule being flipped, when night came he would blink his eyes open and shut, swallow around the snot dripping into his throat and rub Vaporub on his lip like a jelly mustache.

As of now, he was holding himself together with great effort, trying not to stumble from the head rushes and twist his ankle on a twig laying around by the ball field, because once he hit the deck he’d be in a dreamland, snoring loud past all the blockage.

He wanted to be with Mickey, though. There was no doubt he’d continue to meet him at their tree on days Mickey didn’t have to go home right away like a drafted soldier. When they had time to just _be_ , away from their families, staring into the gated field and beyond to the dugouts where they’d sit if they were up to a cold metal bleacher digging into their asscheeks.

This was their space that had yet to be infiltrated by brothers, or sisters, or even the chuckle fucks at school they’d eat lunch with because eating alone in the corner, just the two of them, looked a little weird when there was a perfectly good gaggle of male classmates to talk about Pokémon and girl’s budding nipples with.

They only had room to be themselves here and nothing more or less, just enough space for Ian and Mickey as they were, one of them sick with a beanie pulled over his pink ears, one furiously blowing bits of eraser off his paper and beating the back of his head against tree bark.

“Mick,” Ian greeted and gave him his best smile. It felt like it came out drunk and heavy, slipping off his face and onto his shoes with a splat.

Mickey’s eyebrows vanished behind loose strands of hair, his pencil eraser paused between his fingers splayed on the paper. “Jesus, Ian.”

Ian set his backpack down and heaved a big sigh that made his ribs ache. He held them and groaned before collapsing half on top of Mickey, making his papers fall on Ian’s lap. Mickey didn’t seem to mind like Ian thought he would. He huffed a little surprised laugh and shifted so their sides were pressed tightly together. They acted like the width of the trunk was small when in reality it was a huge fucking old-as-shit historical tree that’s diameter could fit at least another person comfortably beside them.

Ian glanced dizzily at the papers now in his possession and saw far too many exponents and _f(x)s_ than he ever wished to see in his life. Mickey’s name was in jagged loopy letters on the top, the ‘y’ had no tail like most people’s and Ian found it charming as shit. Mickey tore it out of his hands, crumpling it a little in his haste. “Fucker,” he scolded.

“M’dying, Mick,” he whined. “What if it was my last wish was to see your math homework?”

Mickey bit the inside of his cheek and rolled his eyes, focusing on rolling out the wrinkles in his paper over his knee. “You’d die unfulfilled, I guess.”

Ian clutched his chest and wheezed like a decrepit old pensioner. “Make A Wish… what I really want more than anything is to look at how well my beloved friend Mickey is doing in honors… just one glance so I can take pictures and use it to cheat when I start doing that kinda math… “ he hacked dramatically and held Mickey’s bicep with trembly hands.

Mickey feigned pity by frowning and nodding his head, tilting it to the side and humming sympathetically throughout. “If you live long enough to advance in math,” he reminded him.

“If I live that long,” Ian sighed in agreement.

Mickey’s face dropped. He wiggled his arm out of Ian’s cold hands and found his pencil beside him. He began working again, much more distracted and slower paced than before. Ian was amazing at breaking his concentration. “You’d waste a wish on looking at _math_?” he snorted. “Wouldn’t want to get a back tattoo or go to France or somethin’?” The question sounded rhetorical, but Ian answered anyway.

“I wouldn’t want a wish. I think I’d just hang out with you if I were dying,” he admitted and snuffled into his sleeve. He didn’t think about the embarrassingly girly things he said to Mickey too often or he’d get caught up in trying to make sure he downplayed how he felt, and it’d ruin them again. He didn’t want to do that anymore, especially since they made peace this summer and they were no longer obligated to move in tedious circles.

Things were finally melting back into place, the way they used to be, probably even better now that they weren't sitting on pins waiting to be told their affection—heads on shoulders and legs strewn over laps—was the wrong way for boys to be. Ian could say anything he damn well pleased because none of it felt wrong.

Mickey peeked at him but didn’t appear disgruntled or embarrassed. Ian corrected his statement. “I mean, not _if_. I _am_ dying. I’m definitely dying. Doctor says so,” he shrugged.

Mickey sighed a laugh and scribbled some formula down. “You mean the old guy at the clinic with the cold hands that gropes our nuts whenever Fiona takes us in there?”

“Yeah. That guy,” Ian smiled and sank into him. “I’m getting pickled for sure.”

“Uh huh,” Mickey hummed and wrote, wrote and wrote and erased, checked his work, wrote again.

Ian was so tired, the sound of scribbling and the leaves pushing in the wind, falling around them like pieces of the orange sun, were lulling him to sleep, falling on him like a pleasant weight, a weight like Mickey’s body leaning on his. He felt cold like Ian, smelled like wet pavement. The side of his socked foot was snuggly flushed against Ian’s shoe. When he got frustrated his toes curled around Ian’s loose lace that laid on the ground and tugged.

Their leg hairs, though more a flitter of peach fuzz than real hair sprung by puberty, were rubbing together in a semi-itchy friction, both pale-blond and sparse, gathering sweat on their calves where their skin touched, their knobby knees up, Mickey’s left one adorned with a green band-aid, their shoulders sinking down, shirts caught on the rough bark.

Mickey’s hair tickled Ian’s cheek when he tilted his head and considered a question. The puzzle at the bottom that asked _Who stole Mr. Function-oli’s exponent?_ was nearly complete, the lines filled with lazy scribbles.

Ian blinked against the pleasant breeze carrying the scent of dying trees and the fuel from the main road. He felt the rise and fall of his friend’s breathing, then stopped fighting the tug on his lashes and closed his eyes.

“If I were one of those cancer patients I’d just ask for like, a huge, cursed Kamakura sword,” Mickey mumbled offhandedly after five more minutes of nothing but scribbles.

Ian inhaled and blinked his eyes open, barely registering Mickey’s voice grabbing him from his half-dream about stiffs laying in morgues, pickled and green. “Hm?”

Mickey pulled his knees to his chest, effectively unsticking their legs from each other, and squinted out at the diamond. “Then if I nicked my skin with it, the blade would bleed my own blood when the weather got hot—cause it’s cursed, you know. It’d start oozing ‘n shit.” He glanced at Ian and back to the field. “I’d live on forever that way. It’d be so kickass.”

Ian blinked a few times and rubbed the blurriness out of his eyes, trying to understand what Mickey was on about since he talked about swords more than Ian figured was normal. It did sound pretty damn kickass, he decided.

Ian chuckled and shook his head. Mickey raised his eyebrows and shrugged. _It would. I know I’m right, your the loser who wouldn’t take your wish,_ the gesture the said.

He leaned his head on Mickey’s shoulder and hid his hands in his sweater sleeves. The onset of fall wasn’t cold enough, and there were still plenty of lush green that had thrived in summer in big patches, but they’d dry up in the next month, and a crisp chill would creep into the air. Ian would _really_ be freezing, soon. His fatigue and sickness made high sixties felt like low forties now.

He felt his beanie being plucked off of his head and let it happen despite the chill on his scalp and ears.

“Fuck did you do to your hair?” Mickey huffed, not sounding very pleased by what fell out of Ian’s knit cap, some of it standing on end from the static.

Ian’s cheeks began to burn when he remembered he’d forgotten to wash his hair this morning, leaving the strands as straight as they were last night when he clamped them between the two hot plates of a flat iron. “I… uh—”

“It’s not curly anymore,” Mickey observed dumbly, sounding a little hurt.

Ian frowned. He was only experimenting because last night he was feeling a kind of low he rarely felt, standing in front of the mirror and eyeing his crooked jaw and wide-set eyes, his ribs bulging against the taught pale skin of his small chest, his scrawny arms.

His fucking curly hair that didn’t grow loose and cool like Lip’s, but in tight coils creating an unruly jungle with its own geographical landscape. His hair made him look like a stupid dweeb. If he couldn’t change his chin or his muscles, he’d do something about that. Ian used Fiona’s iron, albeit cluelessly, and starting pulling pieces into straight, steaming chunks of copper that laid frizzy.

He thought it looked pretty alright when it was all done and started feeling better. Subconsciously throughout he was wondering what Mickey would think—if he’d like it, if he’d think he looked good… looked _hot_ , more mature and older, less like a doofus sidekick whose face was one big freckle.

Ian could instantly tell by Mickey’s expression, a hybrid between pissed and off-put, the corner of his lips down and his brows pressed into his eyes, that he was very wrong. Mickey hated it. Ian mentally smacked himself upside the head.

Ian thought, if nothing else, if not drool dripping from the corner of his mouth or a heavy makeout session transferring his sickness to Mickey, Mickey wouldn’t have anything to say about his hair at all.

“You don’t like it,” he said.

Mickey opened his mouth, then closed it again as his eyes went over the long mop again and again, as if trying to get a really good look, searching for something he missed before he made his verdict. “It’s… I mean, whatever,” he struggled.

Ian sniffled.

Mickey shoved him a little. “What the fuck do I care?” He scowled, almost frustrated with himself more than Ian for even asking. He roughly smoothed out the frizz on Ian’s head, making Ian blink whenever his palm came down hard and his fingers dragged through his tangles. He shoved him again when he was finished for no real reason, he never needed one. “There.”

“Thanks,” Ian breathed, trying to catch his breath after Mickey knocked it out.

“Whatever.”

They sat in silence. Ian’s embarrassment was stewing in his chest. Mickey was fidgeting against him. “Is it gonna be curly again?” he pressed his tongue to his cheek and asked the grass, pained.

“Sure,” Ian pet his own head self consciously.

“I like it,” Mickey mumbled, low and under the wind. “I mean, straight. It looks good,” he promised. Ian’s heart sped up. He looked over at Mickey, restrained hope on his face. He watched him struggle to speak and pull grass from between his legs. Debris was caught in his soft hair and his sturdy shoulders were sunken in, spine visible through his shirt. He looked tired and worn. Ian figured he must have had a long, rough day. He wouldn’t really know because they only shared a thirty-minute homeroom, so he didn’t get to know what he was up to twenty-four seven as usual. He himself had a shit time too, sneezing, limping around the halls with a healing burn on his toes from when Frank knocked the flat iron off the sink when he barged in the bathroom to piss and it baked Ian’s foot.

They didn’t talk about school when they were at their tree, or wrestling in the dugouts, it was a law they always abided—no bullshit school talk, we pretend that septic tank doesn’t fuckin’ exist once we leave those doors—so he didn’t ask.

“But,” he continued, almost to himself, “it looks good curly, too. Nice either way.”

Ian felt heat pool in his gut and the warmth tickle up his back, grip his shoulders. It made his neck sting with excitement, blood rush in his ears, electric pricks race up his jaw.

_He likes my curly hair. He likes my hair. He likes it both ways. He likes it._

“Thanks,” Ian choked. His high almost shattered when he remembered everything else about himself that he wished Mickey liked—all the things that didn’t have such a simple fix as a straightener or hair gel. The features bestowed upon him by his missing mother, the ones that made people so pitiful whenever they gave him a good look, and realized Ian was the only physical proof that Monica existed and passed through their lives in unwanted, periodic whirlwinds because he truly looked like _her_ son. He was a reminder that she would come back, again and again, and maybe one day not at all. Which one of those realities hurt the most? It didn’t matter, because Ian’s face would make either hurt more than it already did.

Mickey didn’t have that connection to Monica, though. He didn’t look at him and see her. Mickey barely remembered what she looked like. He only saw Ian for Ian, true and individual, and if Mickey didn’t like what he saw then Ian could only blame himself for coming out the womb an alien-looking fucker. Mickey would see Ian’s DNA misfortune as entirely his own. The thought made him so unbearably upset he had to cover his face and hope Mickey would think he was wiping snot.

“Do you think I’m ugly?” Ian blurted.

 _Shit shit shit. Why the fuck did I let myself say that? So stupid, so stupid. I’m such a girl… fucking girl. I couldn't just shut the hell up for five seconds about what he thinks of my_ looks _? Jesus, who cares?! Who cares?! We were talking about swords and math for fuck's sake!_

Ian would never forget the look on Mickey’s face when he worked up the nerve to gauge his reaction. It was a look he’d never seen before, not even last year on Halloween when they did the most intimate thing yet with one another.

Mickey looked as though he was carrying all the weight Ian had dragging him down on a daily. He untied them and threw them over his own shoulders. Ian didn’t know the word ‘empathy’ and Mickey barely had a clue himself, but Ian would come to know his friend carried grand amounts of it within him and felt it for very few, so much empathy it was painful and dangerous, but he always had since he was young and he always would. “Ian… “

“Sorry.”

Mickey’s lip curled in confusion. “For what? Your eyes… they’re all red. Is this about your hair? You know I don’t give a shit, dude,” he sighed.

“No!” Ian huffed. “It was just a question. I was wondering… I’m sorry. Don’t know why I asked.”

“You think you are?”

“No,” Ian grumbled unconvincingly and rubbed his eye with his fist.

Mickey groaned and pulled Ian into his body and he gasped as his butt slid through the dirt. He started gently pulling Ian’s hair, making his head move how he wanted it. Ian was unable to fight the corners of his mouth curling, but he sure did try.

Mickey hummed for a moment as if thinking deeply. “Of course I think you’re ugly,” he finally determined, but with such a teasing lilt that Ian didn’t take him seriously. He snorted and sniffled. “Look, man, it’s my job to think all you Gallaghers are cone-headed inbreds—it’s the whole _block’s_ job.”

“Shut up,” he exhaled and looked tiredly at his hands combing through the ground. “I don’t have a cone head.”

“But the honest answer,” he squinted and shrugged at nothing in the distance, absently patting Ian’s hair and cheek, pinching the apples of them and stretching his eye socket. Ian swatted his fingers. “You’re alright.”

“Ow! Mick!”

“Decent,” he added.

“Let go of me, douchebag.”

Mickey looked at him smugly and gave his face a good smack with the backs of his fingers before pulling away. “Anyway, you see the mutilated fucks in sixth grade _alone_?” He shook his head in disbelief. “You may look like E.T. on a bad day but at least I can stand to be around you.”

Ian coached himself not the flinch and glared in the other direction. His nails wedged themselves in the roots of weeds that sprouted near his thigh. “Funny,” he said.

“Aye!” Mickey griped. Ian felt himself being pulled into the dirt and he settled hard on his back and a surprised yelp leaving his lips.

“Jesus!”

Mickey pinned Ian’s arms down by his biceps and leaned over him, gnawing on his lower lip and raising his eyebrows patiently, waiting for Ian to stop squirming and accept his fate tangled in the dead leaves. “Get off me,” Ian pleaded once his muscles slackened in defeat.

“You’re fine,” Mickey insisted, ignoring his request completely and locking eyes to ensure that Ian got it through his thick skull.

Ian glowered like a toddler up at him, unable to hide how easily he took offense over things that were clearly a joke. “Okay,” he sighed. “Now move.”

Mickey lessoned the gap between their faces considerably and grabbed Ian’s face between his grimy, short fingers. He squeezed his cheeks together and shook Ian’s face forcibly back and forth as if examining all his freckles and features, making sure everything was accounted for. “You’re good. You look nice, okay? You’re fine.” Ian ripped his hand away and Mickey got in a couple rough smacks on the fat of his face beforehand. 

“Okay! Okay.” Ian complained. He shuffled under Mickey and was pressed back into the grass before he could sit up. “Let me up!”

Mickey grinned, pleased as punch with his hand splayed under over his chest. He closed the gap between them even further, the tip of his shaggy bangs brushing softly along the line of Ian’s nose and up the center of his forehead, ticking his skin with the feather-light touch. Ian’s anger melted faster than an ice cube on hot pavement, trickling down his body and forming an imaginary puddle underneath him, the liquid cold enough to leave him numb to point where he couldn’t feel Mickey’s palm, pressing over his thudding heart.

He saw flashes of yellow lamplight in his mind like an oscillating beam at the top of a lighthouse, a busted, red, wet face. Green blanket. Bruised belly. A candy kiss.

“What… “ Ian breathed. Mickey’s knee dug sharply into his side but he hadn’t noticed. He was focusing on a myriad of sunspots touching every corner of Mickey’s face, more pallid than Ian’s aside from where they spread over his lips like the spotting of an asteroid belt. His eyes were on fire, dazzling lights behind half-closed lids, small crinkles that made him look tired beneath them, pushing up with his smile. His hair a fluffy, wolfish mess, reddish in the sun. The shadows of leaves fluttering, making a blotchy-patterned shadow over his arms that held him down tight on the earth as if forcing Ian to acknowledge he is physically grounded, that he was alright. The sky was gray and bright beaming through the gaps in the leaves like the sun glares on the ocean, and he was alright.

Ian moved his arm and Mickey let it go without a fight. He placed his palm over the brown birthmark on the back of Mickey’s hand that remained steady on his sternum, pads of his fingers rubbing the bike logo on Ian’s sweater. Mickey smiled wider, lips stretching over those clunky teeth Ian knew he hated, but just like Mickey thought about Ian’s flaws—they looked nice, they were fine.

Ian grabbed Mickey’s whole hand and sat up faster than Mickey could register. He pressed his shoulder into Mickey’s chest and used it to roll his body off, effectively dumping him onto the ground. “Oh, you shithead!” Mickey gasped.

Ian smiled and shrugged. “You wouldn’t get off.”

“Okay, tough guy.” Mickey tongued his cheek grabbed for him. They grappled for a while, rolling around in filth like a couple of wild laughing hyenas nipping each other in a savannah. Ian’s bulky shoes and Mickey’s socked feet flying up in the air, shirts being tugged, hair getting yanked, bony legs tangling—two boys lost in a grass shreds.

Minutes after they settled, sweaty bodies thrumming in a heap—loud laughter and the ballfield gate being rattled disrupted their silence. Mickey looked on idly and Ian cursed under his breath when he saw a swarm of older boys dressed in jerseys for club ball poured on the diamond. One of those boys being Will Rawlins, cap crammed over his head, jersey unbuttoned revealing a white tank top with his ugly chest tattoo peaking out like a claw. He laughed and twirled his bat, clueless to his two regular victims watching him from a distance.

“We should go before he sees us,” Ian panicked.

Mickey grabbed his arm before he could bolt. “Easy.”

“Mickey—”

“Relax,” Mickey mumbled, as level-headed as he’d ever been. He roosted himself off the ground, taking his bag with him. “Look closer,” he suggested.

Ian’s eyebrows bumped together and he looked confusedly at Will, following him with his eyes as he hobbled around, clutching his thigh, laughing about it with his friends while they thumped his shoulder.. “Bum leg,” Mickey explained in feigned pity and sucked his teeth. “Shame, shame.”

Ian raised an eyebrow and looked up at him. He had his hands shoved in his pockets and a telling smirk pulled across half of his face.

Ian’s eyes gleamed with subtle horror. “ _You_?”

Mickey chuckled and held a hand out. Ian grabbed it and pulled himself up. Leaves fell off his shirt and landed scattered around their feet. “Fuck no,” Mickey answered.

“Your brothers?”

He shrugged and the corners of his lips pulled down. “Well, some guys adjacent to my brothers. You know they’re too pussy to do that kinda shit themselves unless they got some authority figure to push ‘em.”

“Jesus,” Ian’s heart galloped as his lower lip hung like a dead fish. Mickey was, by contrast, very nonchalant and amused as he pulled Ian’s beanie that he had kept shoved in his pocket over his own dirty hair.

They grew from similar roots and had seen the same things but Ian was always a few rungs below on the ladder than Mickey. It would be that way at least for a little while before Ian flung himself through time and space to catch up with him.

“McClure is in juvie now, too.” He tucked his thumbs in the loops of his bag straps and wiggles his fingers. “Botched home invasion.”

Ian laughed like a cracking firework. “Ah shit, I heard about that.” He laughed more, he couldn’t help it. It felt more amazing than he thought it would being home free, at least for a while. 

Contrary to his excitement, he felt the hot fist squeezing his heart whenever Will and Ace were mentioned, his mind immediately reverted to the state it was in that night, less fearful from the fight and more horribly in love, feeling a longing so heavy it was palpable. The memory was like staring at haunted shadows on a wall.

Mickey cut through his thoughts. “They won’t be bothering us.”

Ian shook his head and sighed. “Will his leg be okay?”

Mickey turned toward the tree and reached for the lowest branch. “Course it will,” he waved. “He’ll be up for date-raping chicks and torturing strays in no time, don’t worry about it. Let’s climb,” he looked at Ian and nodded up at the sturdy branches.

Ian blinked. “What? _No_.” They hadn’t actually climbed their tree since they were ten. Who the fuck knew what would happen if they tried it now, fifteen pounds heavier plus the weight of his bag and Ian’s dense mop-hair.

Mickey’s eyes rolled skywards. “We can outrun Will, sure, but it’d be better if we up higher so he won’t bother us, man.”

“Why don’t we just _leave_ if it’s a problem?” Ian threw his hands out.

“This our spot. M’not going anywhere,” Mickey answered simply, yet territorial. He rolled his baggy shirt sleeves up his thin arms and tucked them under the straps, determined to climb the damn thing even if he was less agile than his younger self. Ian leered.

Mickey didn’t have arms like some of the boys at school that were already gaining muscle. He didn’t have arms like his brothers, and he was far smaller and elfin compare to them, with short legs and a stout torso, but his biceps had definition Ian forcibly tried to ignore.

He liked how Mickey was shaped, the small amount of tone in his body—more than Ian had—how tall he was, and though they were the same height, Ian often thought about how much he’d love Mickey’s height even more if one day he outgrew him.

“Gimme a boost,” Mickey crudely interrupted Ian before he could let himself salivate. He was pulling his weight up with the branch as his socks scraped the bark experimentally.

The drooling finally commenced when Ian noticed the sliver of Mickey’s belly and his naval. The waistline of his boxers were hugging his soft hips and sat just below the line where his thigh met his pubic bone, a sight he didn’t get to admire while they were wrestling and hadn’t seen as often since the summer when they barely wore clothing around the house.

“Help me, bitchface!” Mickey kicked a rock at him and released the branch.

Ian shook the stars out of his head. “Huh?”

Mickey’s face smoothed over cynically. “Boost me up, cotton candy brains.”

Ian felt pressure in his sinuses and tears flood out of the ducts, a sneezing fit followed. It ripped him away from any arousal he might have been feeling and flared up his exhaustion from the day. “I-” sneeze, “can’t,” sneeze. He stood there miserably, glaring at Mickey through blurry vision with his arms heavy at his sides and snot dribbling from his nostrils. He was half unconscious at this point, seeing purple birds at the corners of his eyes.

Mickey seemed to have mercy on him then. His puckered forehead relaxed and his expression was gentle. “Come here, drippy.”

“Can’t,” Ian whined.

“I know, but try. Boost me up and I’ll pull you from the ground so you don’t have to climb.” Ian sighed and relented because he knew he would end up following Mickey anyway, he always did. He trudged toward him. “Kay, lock your fingers together and when I can reach the branch you won’t have to hold my weight anymore.”

“Ugh.” Ian kneeled and did as he was told. Mickey placed his sweaty socked-foot on his laced fingers. Ian lifted with all the strength left in him until Mickey became weightless and Ian was comfortably holding his heel with one hand. He watched him pull himself up and over onto the branch, scraping his shorts and grunting when his tailbone pressed hard into the wood. The leaves rustled and many came loose from their branches.

“Fuck, comfier up here than I remember,” he hissed and situated his buttcheeks so they were hanging over the side a little. “C’mere,” he panted and bent his waist, reaching between his legs and gripping Ian’s outstretched arms. “Put your foot on the trunk and push. I’ll do the rest.”

“Doubt you can lift me without any help,” Ian huffed, his voice strained as he pressed the sole of his shoe on the tree and Mickey began to pull.

“You’d be wrong, gingersnap…” He grimaced as he lifted Ian enough to slide his hands under Ian’s armpits and pulled. Ian braced himself with his hands tight around Mickey’s biceps and pushed his way up with his feet on the trunk. Mickey wrapped an arm around his torso when he was high enough and heaved him onto the branch, barely maintaining his balance and groaning about a cramp in his arm. Mickey let out a loud victory groan and pulled his bag off his shoulder as he moved to straddle the branch.

Ian willed the blood rushing in his face and ears away by taking deep, hard breaths every couple beats of his hammering heart. His armpits hurt enough to bruise from Mickey’s fingers grasping his skin, but it felt freeing to let his feet dangle into the open air, kicking them lightly and breathing in the scent of the crisping leaves that brushed the top of his head. They had a better view of the field from this angle and could see a broader expanse of the prolific brush touching the corners of the roads that lead to modest brick duplexes.

He followed Mickey’s lead, facing him and wincing when he sat on his nuts by mistake. The branch dug into his tailbone but he’d wait until he grew numb before he could tolerate it. He leaned back on the trunk and sighed.

Mickey rifled through his bag and pulled out a plastic pouch filled with dry Fruit Loops and an orange. “Mandy got her period or whatever a few days ago,” he mentioned casually. Ian’s breath stuttered a little and he sneezed hard. Mickey wiped his knee grouchily where Ian sprayed him.

“Oh?” he said dumbly as his hands fidgeted in between lap and scratched the jagged texture beneath them. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react. He instantly thought of Fiona, the only one he knew that had one of those, whatever it really was. It seemed ominous and scary like something from mythical folklore. The stories about all the village witches going to dance and chant in the forest at night. All the men were mystified and never spoke of it during daylight if they wanted to avoid being sacrificed. Ian never asked Fiona because he feared the lingering evil omen about the sacredness her womanhood.

He also knew when girls got their periods they could get pregnant anytime they wanted to, which made him think of Mandy pregnant at twelve and he began to pick at his thumb in discomfort. Then—and he couldn’t avoid it no matter how hard he tried because it chugged like a freight train and struck him dead bang—he thought about vaginas. _Mandy’s_ vagina, Mandy’s vagina _bleeding_. Pink, folded, wet, bloody vaginas.

He tore the skin completely down the length of his nail and hissed in pain. His stomach bubbled with bile and he swallowed down the amount sliding up his throat.

Mickey shoveled Fruit Loops into his mouth and watched him warily. He reached out and snatched his arm when he began to sway a little too far to the right. “Fuck, don’t fall off! Christ.”

Ian blinked and shook his head. “I’m fine. I’m, I was… I got dizzy,” he stuttered.

Mickey looked at him incredulously and pushed air through his nose, fully weirded out. “Yeah… “ He paused, and the put held the baggie between his teeth and pulled Ian’s thighs so he was leaning back against the tree at a better angle. He was more stable this way. “Don’t move around… “

“Okay,” Ian sighed without a fight, legs warm where he grabbed.

“As I was sayin’,” he chewed, “Mands started bleeding all over the tub and she was like, crazy upset.” His hand sliced through the air dramatically and he placed it on his thigh to wipe his fingers while digging the cereal out of his molars with his tongue. “She was screaming and crying like fucking Carrie and I come running in and she asks me to help. What the fuck am I supposed to do?” His eyebrows flew across the bit of forehead uncovered by Ian’s beanie. “I don’t know shit about that kinda stuff besides seeing your sisters tampons in the toilet sometimes, or fuckin, Carl stickin’ the pad ones to his ears and pretending he knows Klingon”

That made Ian feel a strong familial protectiveness over her. Ian didn’t know hardly anything about _times of the month_ but he knew there was no reason to be afraid of it, really. Though he’d probably shriek like a bitch if dudes bled every month and he saw some coming from his piss hole for the first time, so he couldn’t talk. Mickey probably wouldn’t give a shit, though. He’d be pissy and bitter as he wrapped his dick in toilet paper and get on with his day.

Their mom hadn’t been around since the onset of Mickey and Mandy’s puberty, much like Monica when it came to Ian and Lip. Mandy so far was winging everything about growing up, changing, dealing with her body and liking boys. She would go to Fiona when she could, and Fiona would tell her all about periods loud enough from the kitchen that the boys winced and turned up the volume on the TV, but it still didn’t prepare her for what bleeding on her own on a regular afternoon would feel like.

“I grabbed some napkins and stuff but she cried even harder the more it ran down her legs in the shower,” Mickey continued, softer, eyes glued to his cereal as he searched for a green one and placed it on Ian’s knee politely. “It was freaky, dude, but not like a horror movie or anything. I thought she’d bleed a lot more but really it was just down her legs, all watery.” He shivered.

I tried to get her to calm down but, you know my uncle was there and he came in like a fucking raging bull askin’ what the hell was going on. I couldn’t… I don’t know,” his voice dipped and they were quiet for a while. Ian was worried about what Mickey might tell him next if he spoke again. He nervously ate his green fruit loop.

When he did, he said it in one big, indifferent sigh, the same way Fiona tells Ian she had a long day before she plops on the couch and looks unbothered while she surfs channels. “He’s like my dad in a lot of ways. His second, kinda, stomping around the house when dad’s in the clink, making sure shit’s in order,” he explained. “You know, so it wasn’t a surprise to anyone when he… yeah,” he floundered, “but,” he finally looked up at Ian. He was smiling wistfully. It was off-putting and uncomfortable to see, but Ian didn’t say anything. “While he was busy smacking her around I dipped into his wallet on the coffee table and stole a couple of twenties,” he said proudly. “Bought a buncha food cause we were dry; frozen pizzas, ramen, bread, Fruit Loops, oranges—cause I know you like them,” he mentioned off-handed and tossed to orange into his lap.

Ian smiled, but it was faint.

“I bought girl stuff for Mandy, too,” he finished with a small shrug. Ian nodded solemnly. His chest cramped at the mental image of Mandy getting pushed around, but he wasn’t angry at Mickey for not intervening because it’d be very difficult to wedge himself between a man double his height and triple his weight, and sometimes, Ian knew but he didn’t know how to explain it: the kids in the webby corners of nuclear family life, far from the center where love and unconditional sacrifice sat, had to bite their lip and take a belt, had to listen to their siblings cry on the other side of the door when it wasn’t their turn and deal with it, because there was no fighting back until they were stronger and held fear inside of their pockets instead of in their stomachs.

“That’s real good,” was all Ian could say. If he said more he might cry for Mandy.

“Yeah.” Mickey’s tone was completely changed now, as though they were stepping from one stormy slate topic into something airy and easy. “Did you know those pad thingies come in sizes?” He squinted and his lip curled up from his front teeth while he fingered his snack. “Like chicks have different size vaginas ‘n stuff.”

Ian was perplexed. “Huh. Well, I guess it makes sense?”

“Does it?”

“Well your sister’s isn’t gonna be the same as my sister’s, you know? They’re different ages.”

“That’s so gross, man,” Mickey whined to the sky.

“What?” Ian snorted.

“I don’t want to compare our sister's _vagina sizes._ ”

Ian gave him a look. “Who else do we know with vaginas?”

“Like the billion at our school and the all the teachers with the wrinkly dusty cooches, too,” he chuckled.

Ian groaned and laughed. “Okay, okay. I don’t want to talk about _anybody’s_ … ugh… “ he trailed off.

“Cooch?” Mickey smirked.

“Don’t fucking call it that!” he lamented.

“Coochie coochie coo?”

Ian kicked his leg, unable to rough house with him without one of them plummeting to earth. Mickey giggled like mad, chomping on more cereal. When Ian looked grossed out by seeing the food in Mickey’s mouth, Mickey stuck his gray mush colored tongue out and sneered at his disgust.

“But it’s weird to think about vag’s having… different widths or whatever,” he continued.

Ian peeled his orange, dropping the orange bits off the tree and digging his dirty fingers in the soft fruit to rip off another section until it was ready to eat. “I gotta piss.” Ian decided while he was pulling the first wedge off and popping it into his mouth, trying to ignore Mickey’s spiraling episode on crotch proportions before he got sick again thinking of a body part he knew he should be obsessing over.

He should be running his finger between the legs of women in adult magazines pretending he was touching them or whatever like his brother did when he thought no one was looking. It was just safe not to think of pussy or tits in general, safer to pretend they didn’t exist and that’s why he didn’t have any interest in wanting to touch or taste them. How could he lick something if it wasn’t real, right?

“Then pee.” Mickey raised a brow.

Ian’s souring mood freshened up again when he recalled something they used to do when they were smaller up here, or in the trees in their backyards. He didn't consider how weird it might sound now that they weren’t eight years old until the words flew from his mouth. “Let’s pee off the side together.” _Oh, hell._ He cringed.

Mickey laughed outright. “Like pull out our dicks right here and cross our streams?” he smiled wide and licked his teeth. “You’re a freak, Gallagher.”

Ian huffed and pulled the strings of his hoodie, trying to play it off as a big joke with his body language and slumped posture. Mickey reached behind Ian’s neck and pulled his hood over his head until it completely covered his face. “But sure. Guess I gotta pee, too.” He grinned when Ian pushed the hood back until it sat behind his hairline.

Mickey moved so he sat with his legs hanging off one side again and placed his fruit loops precariously on the branch beside his thigh. Ian didn’t exactly realize what he was in for until Mickey started unzipping his pants, that’s when the reality backhanded him across the face, and it was wearing gold rings.

The sound of the zipper teeth splitting apart and his button popping open made Ian begin to panic. It felt like a muggy fever dream, so thick he could suffocate. Ian squeezed his orange in one hand and it squirted juice on Mickey’s arm.

Mickey looked at him, hardly noticing the orange juice sliding in the crook of his elbow. “You could pee your pants I guess, but I think you should try it the big boy way, you know?” he teased, biting the tip of his tongue. Ian managed a small laugh while big broadway letters threw themselves in front of his mind’s eye.

WHAT IF I GET A BONER?!

WHAT IF I GET A BONER?!

Mickey leaned on one side to shimmy his shorts down one buttcheek and did the same with the other until the top of his plaid blue boxers were out and was unbuttoning the crotch.

Ian was a little ridiculous for thinking he couldn’t control himself when they’ve been in this situation more times than he could count. He could make a sentimental scrapbook in his head of all the times they peed together, but every week it was getting increasingly difficult not to give himself away, and while he was glad they were so close and affection again, there was a benefit to all the gaping barren distance they used to have—Ian hardly felt aroused for months.

He didn’t touch himself or wake up with morning wood for long stretches of time. He didn’t even really think about sex as much as did when he was allowed to just _be_ with Mickey. Everything he did was cautious and diligent, nothing made him feel that pressure in his pelvis and the tight pull in his gut, the throb in his balls. He felt utterly lifeless and was ridden with sadness like spreading cancer.

It was different now, so glaringly different and worse that it scared him shitless, and he would act so spooked and cagey around Mickey sometimes.

As days went on he struggled worse and worse. He got off all the time. He had an abundance of wet dreams and made sure the blanket never slipped off of him when Mickey was beside him. He thought about sex so much it became intrusive. He thought about _gay_ sex and how that worked. He got the gist. Lip said it was like plunging a guy’s toilet, and as unappealing as that sounded he fought hard to think of anything else.

He didn’t only think about Mickey. He didn’t only recount every time they undressed in vivid detail, or the way the water ran down his shoulders in the pool, or what that _stupid, fucking kiss_ meant all those months ago that clung like a hangnail on his mind. It had mystifying qualities because it felt so forbidden and unspeakable. It clawed at him every single day.

Ian didn’t only think about the things with Mickey’s name written all over it. He thought about other guys, too—other guys touching and kissing, naked bodies, boys in his grade and the upperclassmen with big arms and hairy bodies. Being close to Mickey again made him _want_ everything. He allowed himself to think, and everything sorta spiraled.

Seeing Mickey’s dick now might actually put him a coma, then he’d fall off the branch, hit his head and die anyway.

Before he could protest and call it off as one, fat, _miserable fucking joke_ , Mickey spoke while reaching for himself inside the hole in the fabric, “I guess girls being different sizes down there makes some kinda sense, cause guys are different lengths,” he mumbled.

Ian almost whined when Mickey finally revealed himself, but his eyes darted away and he made haste putting both his legs over the side of the branch. He didn’t see anything, only a blur of orange from above, and the green grass below.

“Okay, plop it over man, I gotta piss,” Mickey ordered, impatient and oblivious. Ian struggled to unzip and slide his pants down with one hand (the other holding his orange protectively). He wasn’t hard, because he was sure fear was wilting any sort of boner he would have had, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any surprises up ahead.

The breeze running across him felt odd and made the skin on his balls crawl unpleasantly. He remembered this being a lot more fun and less like a shameful-indecent-exposure party as he tried to keep himself flaccid. He leaned forward on the branch so he didn’t splash his legs. Mickey followed suit. “Ready?” Ian muttered, a little delirious. “Piss.”

They both released their bladders and their streams rained down on the grass in small glorious arcs, splattering over the dead tufts near the base of the tree. Mickey grinned and poked his tongue through the gap in his teeth and pointed his at Ian’s so they splashed together halfway down. Ian felt backsplash on his leg and shouted. “Asshole!”

“C’mon, make squiggles with me,” he encouraged and shook himself so his pee wiggled and broke into drops against Ian’s long and steady one. Ian shook himself like he would if he was forcing off the last drops over the toilet and it made a brilliant golden zigzag pattern beautifully intertwining with Mickey’s. He laughed when Mickey cheered.

It was then Ian realized how it must look to someone passing by behind them to see two boys in a tree making collaborative pee art several feet down onto the ground and he laughed even harder.

Mickey lifted his shirt halfway up his stomach and made small spirals twisting himself in his hand, and that’s when his own stream stuttered and began the spurt out weakly as he made the huge moronic mistake of looking down in Mickey’s lap.

“Your… p-pubes.” He blinked like an idiot. They were getting messier now that they’ve reached their ends and Ian was hardly steering himself anymore.

Mickey’s wolfish grin stayed intact as he looked towards Ian. He was beaming, in fact. Peeing off of heights made him really happy. It was the simple pleasures that really captured their days. “Huh?”

“They’re blond,” he remarked brainlessly.

Mickey frowned down at his crotch while he shook himself off. “So? Yours are too,” he defended and pointed his chin at Ian’s dick sitting in his hand, but then strangely, to Ian’s chagrin, didn’t look away. “You’ve seen ‘em before… “ he trailed off and ran his eyes repeatedly over Ian, over his arm and back to his hand, what was _in_ his hand. It was maddening, and Ian was creeping with blood so hot it stung, his stomach was coiling vulnerably. Why wasn’t he zipping back up? Why couldn’t he move? Why was he stuck twitching in his palm and making no effort to hide it?

Because he wanted him to look.

“I guess I just never put it together in my head,” Ian exhaled.

“Put what together?” Mickey asked slowly, finally lifting his eyes but letting them settle back where they were wanted to be, burning holes in his skin.

Ian fumbled, further making an ass of himself. The hot stinging blood reached his eyes now, and they were watering a little. “I th-thought they’d… I don’t know, be a different a color. That’s all.”

“Like what?”

Ian sighed and ripped his beanie off of Mickey’s head, making the frizzy thick tufts stand up, regally messy. “ _Black?_ ”

Mickey blinked up again, barely registering the loss of his cap. He managed to look offended, a faint ghost of his angry look. “Well they’re blond, alright?” He ripped his eyes off of him and focused on the area where their pee was fizzing and settling into the plant roots, wet stripes they couldn’t actually see. “I was born blond,” he reminded.

“I know.”

“So… “

“Forgot.”

Mickey’s voice was even now. The edge was gone and it made Ian relax a bit. “Yeah. I knew they would be 'cause of my arm hair or whatever but it was still weird to see. Came right before my balls started droppin’ and my dick grew like a fuckin’ sugar snake,” he slurred the words together like he does when he’s a little embarrassed.

“How big is it?” Ian let the words slip and he had to grip the tree in order not to fall backward and kill himself.

“What?” Mickey’s small smile was swiped like he witnessed a car accident or he was just informed he had three days to live. Ian’s eyes watered even more and he began to tuck himself back in his pants with shaking hands.

“Nothing.”

“My dick?”

“ _No_ ,” Ian lied like a moron even though there was nothing else in the world he could have been talking about.

“I don’t know,” Mickey answered anyway, seeing right through him. He pushed himself back in his underwear and pulled up his pants, vexed and tired, letting his hands fall loudly against his thighs before he looked the other way and watched clouds pass over the manufacturing plant a half mile down the road.

Ian felt the horrible crushing silence on every inch of his skin, pulsating and biting, pulling his arm hairs, nipping his cheeks, scratching his scalp and pinching his testicles. He pushed his thighs together and tried not to let a tear drip down his cheek, and when one managed to he rubbed it with his sweater sleeve before Mickey could see.

Weren't all boys comparing dick lengths in school bathrooms and after PE? Ian’s thoughts bounced from deep regret to curiosity about Mickey’s caginess.

The words “I don’t want to be” played in his mind from last Halloween, whispered by Mickey between uneven breaths they took while laying in bed, sore and cold. Mickey said he didn’t want to be…

Ian didn’t think he was. He blamed Mickey’s confusion on himself and how persistent he was making Mickey uncomfortable and pushing his boundaries.

“Y’know I didn’t… I didn’t mean to be weird,” he choked.

“S’okay,” he said distantly. “M’not mad.”

“Seems like it.”

Mickey sighed. He looked at his feet kicking in cooling air, pale skin swishing through dusty light. He moved his leg to cross ankles with Ian, the bottom of his foot running over his laces. “Not.”

“I’m sorry anyway,” he whispered.

Mickey took Ian’s orange that sat baking and softening in his sweaty hand for five minutes. He took three pieces off. He ate them slowly and pursed his lips around the sour juice. “Me too.” He handed him the rest. Ian ate it carefully, and when he was done his stomach was settling after cramping with nausea. He really did like oranges. One summer that’s all they really had, along with fruit punch and the occasional fast food meal. They had so many oranges from the food bank. Ian couldn’t get enough. Mickey remembered how much he loved them and thought to get him some with his stolen cash.

“I gotta go to Mandy,” Mickey sighed. “She doesn’t want to leave her room and I don’t want to leave her there with my uncle, so I can’t come over.”

“That’s okay,” Ian deflated a little, but he was mostly happy Mickey didn’t hate his fucking guts right now for running his huge mouth. How many close calls would there be before he stopped being Ian’s friend all together? The thought stressed him out too much on some days. He was constantly paranoid that Mickey would slip away, but he seemed alright now, and he was gonna go take care of his sister. He needed to, so, Ian didn’t mind. “How’s she doing?” he wondered.

Mickey swung their feet back and forth together. “With her period?” His shoulders heaved with a big breath like it was a feat just to think about. “Fine. She’ll live. She’s getting blood all over the toilet and stuff and she refuses to take Tylenol when her body hurts because she’s afraid she’ll choke on it but… “

Ian laughed and Mickey tossed a smile his way. “With her bruises ‘n stuff? It’s not as bad as you think. They’re healing. She’s feeling alright. Still asking about you nonstop and drawing pictures of you in her notebook ‘n shit, so she can’t be doing too bad,” he added, prickled and cranky with a hint of disgust.

Ian snickered and scrunched his nose diabolically while Mickey nodded sarcastically.

Mickey toed Ian’s sock, the indents on his skin from the elastic exposed to the nice breeze. It felt good. “You still haven’t told me why you don’t like her.”

Ian raised his eyebrows, caught off guard, but recovered quickly before he could reveal anything with the look on his face. “Oh, uh,” he shrugged, trying not to feel anxious or sick again. He plucked the most basic explanation he could find while under Mickey’s scrutiny. “She’s not… what I like,” he managed

Mickey cocked his head. “Liar.”

Ian shook his head. “I’m serious.” Boy, was he serious.

“Okay, but I know you don’t think she’s ugly or anything. You think she’s pretty. Everyone thinks Mandy is pretty.” He rolled his eyes, seeming to wrestle with his words like Ian was, grapple with feelings when his voice got tight and his eyelids drooped. He looked sad but did a good job of smothering it.

Ian never considered that he’d be jealous of the attention Mandy got, and the thought was so out left field he still didn’t consider it when it popped in his head.

“She is pretty. She’s just… “ They leaned into each other unconsciously, slower than it took the clouds to travel along the expanse of the blue overhead. They watched one another’s face closely. Ian traced the slope of his nose and his high, round cheeks, his soft lips, pliable, stretched into an uncomfortable smile, his long thin eyelashes catching glares through the leaves, motes swirling over his hair like a halo, catching on the gentle waves of his mohawk, passing across the pink burn on the bridge of his nose, swarming around his peculiar beauty. “She isn’t what I want,” Ian whispered.

Mickey lips relaxed, his teeth poking out and his tongue wetting his lips. He breathed uneven over it while it slid to the corner of his mouth, wandered, slipped away. Ian watched Mickey’s eyes like they were two burning stars and Ian was mercury in orbit around them as they exploded with light.

“What do you want?” Mickey whispered, pressing closer until Ian could taste the Fruit Loops on his breath and smell his skin, like wet pavement… oranges and dirt on the sidewalk, oranges they shared and spit they shared nearly a year ago.

“MILK-O-VICH!” someone shouted behind them with all their might from the field, accompanied by the abrupt jangle of the fence. “I KNOW THAT’S YOU UP THERE. TELL YOUR PISS-UGLY BROTHER HE OWES ME A NEW…” Mickey snapped his head in the direction of the man so fast Ian heard his neck crack. He gasped loudly and choked on it as though he was coughing up water.

Before Ian could register what was being said or what the paralyzing pressure on his spine and the crawling of his kidneys was due to, Mickey’s hands were one his chest fast and hard with the force of a truck, knocking the wind out of him and jostling him off the branch.

Ian was hurtling toward the ground.

“Carburetor… “ the guy had finished in a daze, watching his descent in sheer amazement.

Ian felt a great explosion of pain when he connected with the hard, _so fucking hard_ , surface of the earth. He heard a vomitous crack of a bone breaking but was not aware which one it was until he rolled on his back with such raw urgency to keep his weight off of it that he knew, with disoriented horror, it was his collar bone, curving funny under his skin.

His shoulder popped, dislocated and throbbed so tremendously he saw beats of white spots in his eyes that coincided with the rhythm of his askew joint.

Ian sat suffocated with time-stopping silence, and then all in one grizzly rip of his throat like the starting of a chainsaw, he _screamed_. It drowned out anything Mickey might have been saying as Ian registered his clumsy, frenzied movements down the tree, nearly getting his own broken bone while trying to get to Ian. He landed hard and painfully on his feet and his hands were bleeding from the tree wedging fat splinters in his skin but he paid it no attention.

“Oh fuck! Oh fuck, Ian. I’m so sorry. Fuck fuck fuck! I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry. Shit!” Words tumbled from his mouth incomprehensibly under Ian’s throaty sobbing. His his hands hovered over him, frantic and desperate but unsure where to grab and what to do.

Ian’s pain was a giant flare from a fireball and was now a slow, deep, stabbing like someone was tenderly shanking him over and over, slicing through his chest, carving his bone.

He had landed like a fucking sack of potatoes and sounded like one too. It was a miracle in and of itself that he didn’t hit his head but reflexively kept his chin tucked into the shoulder that didn’t experience the impact. But now he was dead shattered weight and could do nothing to stave off the shock and trauma seizing his shoulder and squeezing his neck. He only laid there and cried, then dizzily recalled what happened.

“You fucking shoved me!” he shrieked.

Mickey looked completely torn up and scatterbrained, eyes glossed over with apologetic tears while his lip trembled when he glanced over the awkward curve of his clavicle. He was still less fearful than Ian was because he had been in this situation a few times already, as the victim, the perpetrator, and the witness. He knew how to navigate the case of a broken bone.

“Someone call an ambulance!” he yelled to the audience of teenage boys staring through the gaps in the gate, ignoring Will’s realization and astonished laughter. Mickey’s voice was steady and strong despite the stray tear that fell on his shirt and how hard his hands shook clutching Ian’s sweater.

“Why’d you,” Ian gasped and coughed. He swallowed hard squeezed Mickey’s wrist while he tried not to writhe, shoes digging hard into the grass, but it was like an indescribable itch, the need to flex his muscles and move, the need to physically escape the pain by rolling away from it, though it would follow him wherever he went. The realization was so upsetting he began to cry all over again. “It won’t stop. It won’t stop,” he hiccuped. “Oh fuck, it won’t stop Mih- Mickey.”

“I know. I’m so sorry, Ian. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Mickey.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t breathe.”

Mickey growled helplessly deep in the back of his throat, furious with himself. He went to pull on Ian’s good arm and slid his shoulders and head into his lap while Ian moaned as an electric shock of pain crawled over him like the legs of a huge spider.

Mickey rubbed Ian’s hair with the most gentle, loving fingers, combing through the straight strands that he seemed to dislike but now worshipped, soft and weaved with twigs, sliding in the crooks of his fingers and passing the crevices on his palms.

Mickey aggressively wiped the moisture from his own cheeks, nearly punching himself in the face when his fist connected and dragged toward his ear. He muttered apologies and careful proclamations, proclamations that everything would be alright. The promises washed over him like the trickle of warm water being wrung from a sponge onto his forehead, soothing but insufficient. He spoke until his words sounded like nothing to Ian’s ears but the hum of a distant waterfall, some liminal echo. Mickey held his cheeks and rubbed the pads of his fingers over his jaw, let him cry and cry and cry.

They sat in their pee and Ian’s orange peels—a mess of sweat, crooked bone, fragments of wood, garbled words—and waited for sirens.

**Author's Note:**

> So it's canon Ian broke his collarbone at twelve and I like to keep it real here at salemslot ;) but not /that/ real...lmao. Feel free to leave prompts for more kid fics and comment to tell me what you thought  
> [talk to me on tumblr](http://witchmickey.tumblr.com)
> 
> MY BEAUTIFUL TALENTED FRIEND TRISH [DREW ART FOR A SCENE IN THIS FIC!! Please go look/reblog here](https://trishishere.tumblr.com/post/177564262399/thanks-ian-breathed-trying-to-catch-his-breath) it's the cutest cartoon I've ever fuckin' seen in my life and I'll never get over it.


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